This, the fourth issue in Volume 2 of Animal Welfare completes the second year of the UFAW journal. The publication itself can hardly now be described as new: it is being noticed in a wide range of abstracting and indexing journals and is attracting a large number of potential papers.

Although the physiological and behavioural changes that can indicate poor welfareare generally agreed upon, using these measures in practice sometimes yieldsresults that are hard to interpret. For example, different types of measure maysuggest quite different things about an animal's welfare. Suchcontradictions are often due to the differing properties of the variables beingmeasured. How each variable responds to a stressor can be affected by severalfactors - the type of unpleasant stimulus to which the animal is exposed; whenand for how long exposure occurs; the animal's psychological state, egdoes it feel that it is in control?; and the time at which the measurement ismade, relative to the stressor. Typical responses also often differ betweenspecies and between individuals, and may even change in a single individual overtime. Furthermore, some responses used to assess welfare lack specificity: theycan be elicited by neutral or even pleasant events as well as by aversive ones.Appreciating these factors is vital when designing experiments, when choosingwhat to measure along with each welfare variable, and when interpreting results.Even after taking these factors into consideration, interpreting a result canstill be difficult. One approach then is to consider the effects on welfare ofthe changes measured, eg if there is immunosuppression, does the animal succumbto disease? Another is to use the animal's behaviour to indicate itspreference for, or aversion to, particular environments. Ultimately, however,interpreting welfare measures involves subjective judgements which will beinfluenced by the nature of our concern for the animal under consideration. Byraising these problems, we hope that this review will highlight and clarify theapparent contradictions that sometimes emerge in scientific studies of animalwelfare, and help researchers improve the designs of their experiments for thebenefit of the animals concerned.

A questionnaire survey of 385 UK-based university students was used to investigate whether there was an association between pet keeping in childhood and humane attitudes in young adulthood. Subjects gave detailed, retrospective reports of the pets they had kept during their childhoods, and a variety of attitude scales and open-ended questions were used to measure their current attitudes concerning the welfare of both animals and humans. Higher levels of childhood pet keeping were related to more positive attitudes towards pet animals and greater concerns about the welfare of non-pet animals and humans. Ethical food avoidance practices (eg vegetarianism); membership of animal welfare and environmental organizations were also found to be associated with pet keeping during childhood. Knowledge of the experiences that underlie existing variation in humane attitudes will greatly assist the development of more effective humane education programmes in the future.

Social role has been defined as a pattern of behaviour characteristic of a class of individuals within a group. The concept was developed by primatologists both to describe individual variation in behaviour in social groups and to be used in addition to hierarchy as a model for primate social organization. Cattle have been shown to express considerable individual variation in behaviour. Furthermore, cattle and primates show some similarities with respect to their social behaviour. This may indicate that the concept of social roles might be useful to those studying cattle behaviour. After a brief literature review it is concluded that the concept may indeed be applicable to cattle. The possible welfare implications of this are first, that it would offer a new approach for the study of individual differences in behaviour - important to the understanding of how animals cope with their environment in captivity. Second, it could help the understanding of social behaviour in domestic species. It is suggested that an interchange of ideas between primatologists and applied ethologists is needed.

A simple technique for investigating gut passage times in small New World primates was developed, which produced good results without any need for special housing or diet, or for the separation of monkeys from their groups. This technique, which allowed the administration of a faecal marker, chromium oxide, to specific individuals, was used to investigate gut passage times in five species of the genera Callithrix, Saguinus, Leontopithecus and Callimico. Overall, average gut passage time was 4.5 hours, and there were no species differences. Such nondisruptive methods could help in assessing the effects of dietary changes in captive monkeys, and therefore be of considerable value in improving captive diets and hence welfare and breeding success.

Electronic microchip implants were used to identify groups of crab-eating (Macaca fascicularis) and rhesus (Macaca mulatta) macaques. They were implanted in different body sites and monitored for up to fifteen months. One group of rhesus macaques was trained to present the wrist in which the microchip was placed, to enable it to be read easily with the scanner. An improved method of permanently identifying primates will lead to better record keeping and could benefit the animals’ welfare.

Eurogroup for Animal Welfare - the organization which represents the leading animal welfare societies in the twelve member states of the European Community (EC) - has taken upon itself the tedious task of producing, at intervals, an updated summary of animal welfare legislation at the level of the EC and the Council of Europe (C of E).

In response to the growing interest in animal welfare within the world veterinary community, the World Veterinary Association (WVA) in 1988 set up an Animal Welfare Committee. At the 24th WVA Congress held in Rio de Janeiro in August 1991, there were a number of papers given on the welfare of animals used and managed by man.

In 1989 the British Veterinary Association; the Fund for the Replacement of Animals in Medical Experimentation; the Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, and the Universities Federation for Animal Welfare set up a working party to run a series of workshops on the ways in which common scientific procedures could be refined to minimize any pain or distress caused to laboratory animals. Any reduction in these adverse effects not only has the potential to improve the welfare of the animals; it could also improve the quality of scientific research, in that suffering can often result in physiological and other changes which are likely to mask or interfere with the experimental results.

This publication, which is reprinted from the journal Laboratory Animals 1993, 27: 93-107, was drawn up by the Laboratory Animal Breeders Association and the Laboratory Animal Science Association in alliance with the Association of the British Pharmaceutical Industry; the British Laboratory Animal Veterinary Association; the Institute of Animal Technology; the Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food; the Universities Federation for Animal Welfare; the Animals (Scientific Procedures) Inspectorate of the Home Office, and with comments from the Research Animals Department of the Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals. These various organizations had one common aim in mind: the improvement of the condition and thus the welfare of laboratory animals during transit. The guidelines start with an introductory section on the general requirements of animals in transit and this is followed by detailed information on the needs of the various species. The material is clearly presented and there are a number of drawings of transport containers reprinted from the International Air Transport Association's Live Animals Regulations. This is a very useful, concise and informative document. The adoption of the recommendations contained within it should help to ensure the welfare of laboratory animals in transit.

As stated İn the introduction to this new directory, the main aims of Life Science Pages are to encourage communication between scientific researchers and to enhance the accessibility of life science information throughout the United Kingdom. It is a comprehensive listing of contact details for scientists in university research departments and other centres in the Kingdom. All the major research areas are covered including agriculture, biology, earth sciences, psychology, veterinary science and others.

The Compassion in World Farming Trust has recently published a report on the welfare of pigs, cattle and sheep at the time of slaughter. It takes the form of a review of the scientific literature on the subject over the past ten years.

The UK Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food publishes a number of free leaflets and booklets on farm animal welfare. Two of the latest ones are on heat stress in pigs and in poultry; they describe the main causes of heat stress in these two types of animals and outline some of the common sense management measures that will help to prevent it. There is also, apparently, a training video on heat stress available at a cost of £8.25 from MAFF Publicity Video Unit, Room 26, Government Buildings, Hook Rise South, Tolworth, Surrey KT6 7NF.

Over the last few years the biomedical research community, in response to numerous attacks from animal welfare and anti animal-usage groups, has produced a number of popular and semi popular leaflets and booklets defending animal-based research. The two publications considered here are typical examples of the material that has been produced. ‘Animals and the Advancement of Science’, a booklet from the British Association for the Advancement of Science, is a systematic expansion of the six point declaration on animal experimentation originally put forward at the Annual Meeting of the British Association for the Advancement of Science in 1990. Amongst other things, it lists and briefly discusses a number of medical discoveries that were largely dependent on the study of animals and it claims that research using animals is essential to the understanding of disease processes and in the development and testing of new treatments. ‘Understanding Animal Research’ is a booklet in a less formal style, which has been sponsored by the Animals in Medical Research Information Centre and has been paid for by the pharmaceutical industry. It covers in essence the same ground as the British Association's booklet but in a more popular manner.